


anticipation

by aparticularbandit



Category: Jane the Virgin (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-26
Updated: 2020-01-26
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:55:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22432201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aparticularbandit/pseuds/aparticularbandit
Summary: prompt: five times + anticipation.
Relationships: Luisa Alver/Rose Solano
Kudos: 11





	anticipation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Anonymous](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anonymous/gifts).



She can’t run her hand over the wound in her thigh where it hurts the way she would like. There are doctors surrounding her and a policeman across from her and they haven’t even handcuffed her to anything the way that they really should, not that she’s complaining. Her eyes close until she feels the shudder of the ambulance as it runs over the fake speed bumps rigged to alert her to their presence.

She does not count aloud because she doesn’t want to let them in on the secret, but she mouths the words because she knows that’s what Luisa would want. None of them are buckled or strapped into place. They think they’re safe. It’s a warning, the mouthing of the words, for them to pay attention so that something disastrous doesn’t happen to them. She said she wouldn’t kill anyone anymore. It’s their own fault if they die here.

_Five._

_Four._

_Three._

_Two._

_One—_

* * *

* * *

It has been months since she has heard anything from Luisa at all. She paces in her cell – back, forth, back, forth – and she bites at her nails like she’s someone other than herself, like she’s _normal_. The backs of her knuckles are covered in a mottled collection of bruises and scabs. She’s all blue and black and purple and yellow and green marred with freckles that might as well be dried blood. When she doesn’t bite her nails, she picks at the scabs. The pain grounds her.

She’s not worried. Her stomach is tied into knots, but she’s not worried. She doesn’t know what that would even feel like.

All she knows is that something is _wrong_.

A good escape plan can take a while to set up and even longer to pull off and she’d put the full weight of that on Luisa, who had never needed to plan anything like that before. She hadn’t _needed_ to plan it. She _had_ a plan. She only needed to get the money. And she’d been…she’d been doing _well_ on that front, she’d been _trying_ , and then she’d disappeared.

Luisa never just disappeared.

No, she _did_ disappear. She disappeared when she was on a bender. But she shouldn’t _be_ on a bender, she’d been sober for years, she hadn’t had anything to drink since she’d been trying to date Susanna (and she’d been failing to fall for her again, failing to let her live her own, separate life), so she wouldn’t be on a bender. She wouldn’t.

Which meant that something was wrong. Something was _very wrong_. She knew it with as much certainty as she knew that her love for Luisa was the purest thing she’d ever felt. It was worth everything to her. That’s why she was here, wasn’t it? Hadn’t she sacrificed everything?

Her eyes move to the phone. She’s allowed a call out every now and again, now that they think she’s stuck here. They listen in, but there are things she can say to disguise what’s being said.

Luisa told her not to kill anyone, and she hasn’t. She’s put all of that behind her. But she still has contacts – men and women whose faces she’s changed, who still _owe her_ – people who are still afraid of Sin Rostro, regardless of where she is and how she got there. She can still pull strings while she’s in here. She can still—

She needs to make a phone call.

* * *

_“Sometimes I feel like I’m the one in prison.”_

“ **Luisa. You are in the Marbella. I’m actually here. Do you understand what you’re—** ”

She hates the hiss of her voice, the frustration, but her knuckles are raw and bloody and her eye is beginning to swell (the swelling will go down eventually and there will be nothing but black and blue and purple left behind) and she’s thankful that she isn’t missing a few teeth from the fights she can’t avoid on this side of the bars. Her stomach curls in on itself.

“I’m sorry.” The words follow as soon as she begins to hear the stress in Luisa’s voice. She shakes her head, runs her finger through the strands of red hair that have pulled themselves out of her ponytail, and she winces. Her head aches. She hasn’t been eating enough. She hasn’t been hungry. She hasn’t been a lot of things. _She wasn’t supposed to be here at all._ “I love you, Luisa,” she says, the words caught in her throat, soft even though she knows they’ll be heard by people she doesn’t want to hear them, but she knows the woman on the other end needs to hear it. They’ve never been easy words to say, but when she herself is unable to be present to communicate her love in other ways, words are all she has. “Get me out, and we can be together, and you won’t have to feel like you’re in prison anymore.”

 _And I won’t_ be _in prison anymore._

There’s silence on the other end. No, not silence, she can hear background noises, background communications, someone is coming.

“ _I have to go. I love you._ ”

It always sounds better when Luisa says it. Luisa’s better at saying it.

She hangs up the phone and her stomach clenches again on what feels like nothing and she looks at a jail room empty of friends and with people all glaring daggers at her.

It’s easy to lie about having a prison girlfriend who she imagines is Luisa when she’s growing bone thin just from being here.

_Luisa. How much longer?_

* * *

Her eyes close.

This isn’t the first time she’s found herself in this unpleasant shade of orange, but it’s the first time she knows it will stick. Not for lack of planning. She has an escape route in place for this very occasion, and she can pull the trigger from it even here. She told Luisa how _she_ could trigger it, but if she’d only given herself one route, then she hadn’t thought very well, had she?

This was always a possibility.

Rafael, finding a way to get under Luisa’s skin, lying to her, and Rose finding herself here as a result. The question is where Luisa’s loyalty would lie. She expects the answer won’t be her – not for lack of love, because she knows Luisa loves her, but because she has a blind spot where her brother is concerned. Luisa has always chosen Rafael. She’s always seen him as a baby bird who needs protecting. Rose, she’d rather break his neck, but that’s neither here nor there.

The fact that they have yet to let her out means that they have something hefty with which to hold her here.

Which means Luisa’s talked.

She expected that, too.

Even if she _didn’t_ kill Scott. Whatever his name is. _Was._

They’ll let Luisa talk to her before they let her out. At this point, that’s all she’s waiting on. That final conversation before she’s shut away until she gets out.

She’ll get out. It’s not a question of _if_ , it’s a question of _when_.

She can think about that later.

_Where is Luisa?_

* * *

Luisa can’t see them.

She can – they’re right outside the corners of her eyes, trying to hide behind the greenery that Rafael has added around the Marbella because he wants it to look fancier than Emilio ever tried to do. _Some_ green, yes; this much, _no_. He is _ruining_ this hotel.

Not that Rose cares. She’s never really cared about the Marbella.

She cares a little bit more about the police that are waiting on them.

There’s time to leave. She can see them. She can turn around and leave right now, and they won’t be able to do anything about it. Her hand tightens on Luisa’s. “Babe.”

Luisa pauses and turns to face her, brow furrowing. “What’s wrong?” Her eyes narrow. “This isn’t that _the police are watching me_ thing again, is it? We’re fine. _You’re fine._ We’ve done this a million times before, and—”

She leans forward, closing Luisa’s lips with a soft kiss. She cups her cheek with one hand, her ring – Luisa says they’re garish, but they _aren’t_ , thank you very much – cold against her lover’s skin. When they part, she gives her hand a gentle squeeze. “Can’t I want to kiss my girlfriend?”

Luisa softens, and she mentally memorizes the moment, the expression. She holds it as close as she can. Luisa brushes a hand along her face and leans forward to give her another kiss. “Thank you.” Then she scampers off.

Her throat tightens.

The figures on the edges of her vision begin to converge—

* * *

* * *

Her breath catches in her throat.

She knows she looks horrible in the oppressive orange of the past year. 15 months, 27 days, 13 hours, 5 minutes, 23 seconds. Okay, she hasn’t been that specific. She’s guessing on those last three. It doesn’t matter. All of this is over. _All of it._

And here – Luisa – waiting on her. She looks different, but they’ve been apart for so long, of course she would.

Rose relaxes.

“We’re free, babe. We’re—”

Luisa pulls off her face.

* * *

_She waits in the back of the ambulance._

_She mouths the numbers so that the others can take shelter if they are paying attention._

_Five._

_Four._

_Three._

_Two._

* * *

* * *

She takes a deep breath.

The air always tastes salty here. It’s her apartment – a little too close to the beach for her liking, but she has to get used to it if she wants to travel with a hotel owner who has most of his hotels next to the ocean. The air will always taste like this, and she will always feel a little cold when the spray hits her skin.

Tomorrow she will meet his children and the long game that she has already started will begin in more earnest. For now, she is free.

She pulls on the edge of her dress – one that some people will call red when in reality it is really pink. Purple and red stones highlight the edge of one of her breasts. She is beautiful. This is an objective fact. The dress, the curve of her hair, the fingernail polish – all of it only enhances the natural beauty she already has.

The perfume is the last of it, and she sprays the strawberry lavender mixture at her neck.

_Five._

_Four._

_Three._

_Two—_

Something catches in her throat.

She feels like she can’t breathe.

Something is wrong.

She lets go of the rubber ball at the end of her spray, her hands clenching the edges of her vanity, and she takes a deep breath. She looks at herself in the mirror, and her eyes are red. They sting, burning, even though there’s no way she got perfume in them. It _hurts_.

It goes away in a few minutes. Her chest releases its tight clench on her heart.

Whatever’s wrong, it’s passed.

Weird.

She reaches over and spritzes herself one last time with the perfume.

_One._

Her eyes glance outside, where the sun has already set and the sky has grown dark and covered with stars. There will be fireworks later. She straightens her dress again before grabbing her matching clutch and leaving her apartment. Her heels click loud on the sidewalk.

It’s the fourth of July.

Time to party.


End file.
